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coondoggie writes "NASA is looking for a few good experiments to run in space. The space agency this week said it was seeking research ideas (PDF) from private entities who want to do research on board the International Space Station. NASA said it was looking to expand the use of the ISS by providing access to the lab for the conduct of basic and applied research, technology development, and industrial processing to private entities — including commercial firms, non-profit institutions, and academic institutions. NASA said using the ISS as a national lab could help develop a number of applications in areas such as biotechnology, energy, engineering, and remote sensing."

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I think what he meant is that at that distance from the planet, Earth's gravity is still 90-95% as strong as at sea level (the force of gravity is related by the inverse square of the distance). I'm not sure of the accuracy of that statement, however, I do believe the term micro-gravity applies to sustained orbits around Earth.

You and AC are more or less correct. You may recall that gravity acts as though it was a point source at the center of mass; the difference in distance from the center of the earth between you and the ISS is relatively small.

Google [google.com] puts the radius of the earth at 6378 km, and Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] puts the ISS orbit at about 340km (perigee / apogee in the sidebar, if you don't know the terms), which is only about a 5% increase. So if earth is 1 Gee (and it is [wikipedia.org]), at ISS height you would get (1/1.05) Gees =.95 Gees, mo

Free fall makes a perfectly good microgravity environment. There may be gravitational forces present, but they are compensated for by the free fall, and therefore you are in a microgravity environment.

But, let's take your definition of "microgravity" which apparently means "no body close enough to have its gravitational field felt regardless of compensation" for the sake of argument. It's not what the term means, but let's assume it did.

What else can they do? It's just a bunch of folks floating around with clipboards doing what machines could do better, faster, and cheaper. It reminds me of those minimum wage workers who stand around on street corners waving signs, a job done just as well by a wooden post.

1 - how long do lawyers last in space without a space suit.2 - effects on lawyers when exposed to explosive decompression.3 - effects of solar radiation on a lawyer in a space suit.4 - effects of solar radation on a lawyer without a space suit.5 - effects of amoebic dysentery on a lawyer in micro-gravity.6 - how long do lawyers last as an ablative shield during re-entry.7 - what is the maximum ballistic speed a lawyer can reach.

etc...

Oh and as a control do the same experiments on MPAA and RIAA executives.

Already been done on a plane like they use for astronaut training I think, but from what I gather it was more like floating together because the motions of sex lead them to drift apart. I'm sure you could make it happen by pinning against a wall but then it'd probably be like on earth except much more awkward. And even if they hadn't, I think this generation has seen too much porn to care about porn in space. At least moviesex in space, if not the real kind.

NASA emphasizes the utter uselessness of the ISS by asking people what interesting things can be done with it. This after spending billions of dollars and over a decade of work. This money should have been spent exclusively on robotic probes. There is no compelling case here for manned exploration.

I know, I know, the "get off this rock" crowd will now inundate us with their magical-religious space adventure cult emotional arguments.

as a "get off this rock"'er, personally it's a logical conclusion to come to, The planet has limited resources. the universe, eh not so much. Robots don't do so well when you leave the solar system, Just try doing surgery across the country more or less send commands that will takes years to get there. sending a person just makes more since, granted it will probably have to be a generation ship. manned exploration is pretty important prereq for building a generation ship.

With all due respect, "getting off this rock" is a fantasy. Consider this: How much money, time, and resources would it cost to move 10 million people (a miniscule fraction of the earth's population) "off this rock" in a manner that they could survive for 100 years (a miniscule fraction of humanity's longevity up until now)? Put them 1) in earth orbit, 2) on the moon, or 3) on mars. Have them be 1) totally dependent on earth for their consumables and other resources, 2) dependent on earth only for half, and

Creating large scale habitation is also always expensive in direct proportion to the inhospitability of the environment and its distance from vital resources.

Right. So if we never spend the time and money to learn how to make it work right here in LEO with a small population we will never learn how to make it work on a larger scale. New industrial technologies are expensive. For example: Can you imagine how costly the first functional farm tractors were to small time farmers that hoed their few acres with animal power? But do you see how the development and refinement of those technologies have led to wonderful advances in how farms are managed?

It seems like it would be a whole lot cheaper to learn to do that right here on earth where we have plenty of all those, plus gravity, plus lots of free rock, plus a huge margin for error if you screw up. All you'd have to do would be build some sealed domes like Biosphere 2 [wikipedia.org]. Build them in the Antarctic or Sahara, and if the technology works, build thousands of them. There's your O'

With all due respect, "colonizing the New World" is a fantasy. Consider this: How much money, time, and resources would it cost to move 10,000 people (a miniscule fraction of England's population) "to the New World" in a manner that they could survive for 10 years (a miniscule fraction of human life). Put them 1) on a ship, 2) on an island, or 3) on the mainland. Have them 1) be totally dependent on England for equipment, resources and tools, 2) dependent on England for only half, and 3) completely self-sustained. At the end of the 10 year period, they should be completely self-sustained in any scenario you choose.

Please don't make extensive use of the old "we don't know what advances there will be" trick to pretend that at some point it will all be really cheap and easy. Historically, that has never happened. Larger, more advanced sailing ships have always been expensive, and this particular case will be no exception. Creating large-scale colonies is also always expensive in direct proportion to the inhospitability of the environment and its distance from the resource support of the crown.

Nobody is saying that it will be cheap or even easy in the remotely near future. But is that really a valid reason to not even make the attempt? You have to start somewhere, and it will NEVER be cheap/routine if we as a society don't start working toward that goal. Along the way, we can use the technological advances derived from such exploration to (hopefully) better life for those here on Earth. Even something unrelated to ship construction or propulsion systems (such as a self-sustaining food/oxygen supply) could be scaled up to benefit people in the more remote regions of the world.

You do not provide a valid reason for the attempt. You do not "have to start somewhere" to carry out a pointless project. The technological advances will be few and far between. If you want technological advances, fund them directly. Don't make up a pie-in-the-sky fantasy and hope that something randomly useful comes out.

And indeed, the same argument can be made for the plan for a Popsicle Skyscraper and Giant Escalator to Nowhere. Nobody is saying that it will be cheap or even easy to freeze a humungous Cordial Skyscraper in the remotely near future. But is that really a valid reason to not even make the attempt? You have to start somewhere, and it will NEVER be cheap/routine if we as a society don't start working toward that goal. Along the way, we can use the technological advances derived from such engineering challenge

Don't bother. Way too many/.ers have been raised on science fiction bullshit to ever really contemplate the scale involved or the challenges involved (or impracticality of) actual space colonization. It doesn't do any good to point out that it would be MUCH easier to build a sustainable colony at the bottom of the deepest ocean on earth than to build one anywhere out in the black.

Barring some amazing discoveries, it's pretty unlikely that any other body in our solar system could ever support even a small c

Building an air tight pressure vessel capable of supporting an internal pressure 1 atmosphere higher than the outside pressure is a solved problem. Hell, we can even make it inflatable and almost but not quite arbitrary size and shape.

Building an water tight pressure vessel capable of supporting an internal pressure over a thousand atmospheres less than the outside pressure is a ridiculously hard problem that is almost but not quite solved for a 6ft wide sphere with a skin takin

Read the parent. Tell us how you can put 10 million people in space for 100 years. You can't. You would have to invoke the old super-powerful future technology trick repeatedly and on a grand scale. Grow up. This is reality, not Battlestar Galactica.

Pressure is the ONE big problem of colonizing the sea. Colonizing space has *hundreds* of problems, pressure being just one of them (and a minor one at that). The biggest problem of colonizing space is resources. You make the presumption that there are sufficient resources out there to even build an infrastructure in any practical manner, but that's FAR from clear. And even if there were large quantities of water out there somewhere, and it was practical to mine it, and we had a way to convert it efficientl

Says who? The planet may have "limited resources" the way we are using them now but who says there won't be renew-able energy discovered or developed at some point? Why couldn't we find a super-efficient way to harness the energy from the sun to power everything and stop using the "limited resources", for example? I personally believe we have everything here we need. If we make it to another planet and find a way to make it habitable then cool, but we need to focus on finding a way to survive here indefinit

NASA emphasizes the utter uselessness of the ISS by asking people what interesting things can be done with it.

Yes, and the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is useless as demonstrated by NASA asking people what interesting things could be photographed with it. Manned stations, robotic probes, equally useless!

P.S. I agree, more robotic probes. But seriously, sending out a call for researchers to propose experiments is not an indication of uselessness.

Sorry, you said that asking for suggestions on research to be done just emphasizes its uselessness. That's not a strawman, that's what you said. It's not my fault that same logic applies equally to things you like such as MRO or Hubble.

Let's not assume that manned and unmanned missions can do the same thing, because they can't. Manned missions can't visit Saturn or Mars yet for that matter. And there are plenty of experiments that are much more easily performed with human supervision than without, and with pre-existing infrastructure than without. ISS is already up there, and contains space-shuttle-payload size bays designed exclusively for research. It isn't useless, the space agencies involved are already performing experiments on it. Expanding the number of experiments done is expanding its usefulness, not admitting it isn't useful at all as you claimed.

Again, we're in agreement that robotic probes are cheaper and better for exploring the solar system and beyond. I disagree with your stance that the ISS is useless. And your statement that asking for research to be conducted on it demonstrates this uselessness is factually and logically wrong.

Perhaps it's also a nice bonus of progress? iniaturization have taken its toll and the typical experimental equipment is now somewhat smaller slightly faster than expected, with more place for experiments (there was a story recently about miniature experiment containers for the ISS). Or maybe some better communication with the ISS won't mean overburdening the crew with excessive amount of experiments.

Certainly. I agree with the other post you made about how the ISS was anything but an ideal project partly due to being saddled with the role of make-work for the Shuttle. Yet we can't go back and fix that (or not build it at all), it is what it is, and it's a unique science platform. It wasn't that long ago that missing modules meant there was little room for science and a lot of the inhabitant's days revolved around operating the station. Now that it's near c

Sure, construction of the ISS was flawed & expensive (most likely also largely because of the costly mistake which was the Shuttle and the push to save its face...to make it usefull for something; so "hey, why don't we design a space station around modules meant to be launched by Shuttle?!"); could be done much cheaper via autonomous rendezvouz of modules probably. And that's how few upcoming, certinly in some aspects better (and cheaper) space stations will be built. Better also thanks to ISS, our trai

Commercialize manned launchers, commercialize the target for those launches.If companies start seeing benefits from experiments conducted on their behalf in the ISS, then they will be willing to put more money into extending its life & getting more people up there - which will hopefully bring more money into the space program.

Take a spinning sphere and launch a tethered satellite while still spinning. from the teathered satellite launch another teather out such that the secondary teather is long enough to have the circumfrence of the satellite's oribital circumfurance. See if you can get it to hook up back to the original satellite to create an artifical ring on which we can construct stuff. (may required 2 satellites at opposite sides.

3: Behavior of molten metal in low gravity for crystal structure analysis (see if effect is more brittle or harded.)

Well, this discussion shows what has become of slashdot lately. 74 post as I post this, and basically nothing but spelling nazis wanking of to their assumed wit, libertarian numbnuts wanking off to their supreme "knowledge" of the constitution, general numbnuts wanking off to their own lack of vision. That, and a negligible amount of actually interesting posts. We are at a signal to noise ration of about 1:20 to 1:30 here, guys. Way to go, that's probably a new low.

There is a difference between poor English and lazy English. I'm more inclined to be lenient of grammar and flow issues than I am of systemic failure to even begin to care about spelling, especially because I don't know what languages the OP speaks and what their English proficiency is.

The poster you are replying to has a point in that "The first requirement of submitted proposals to NASA is to do so in English". If the author does not care so much about their ideas to make sure they are spelling words

Halo would probably work if you were simply jumping from the height of the ISS. The problem is that when you are on the ISS, you are in orbit. You're travelling at 8+km/s horizontally. Shedding that speed is what causes the re-entry heating.

I used to work for a company that dealt with additives for (Hod help my spelling) Flurothermalploymers. I did computer matenance on a rehometer that they used to see if they got "shark scales" when extruding basically fishing line. The chemist Ludima was always curious on how when pulling the raw line out what extruding in low-g would do.

I bet there is more then 1 Dyneon employee that would be interested in those results.

Same deal as the Russians taking tourists up, I suppose. Many of the support systems are common, but as I understand it each country has some allocated space. The science experiments would probably be subcontracted out to NASA and NASA would do them in its allocated space.

That was just so much NASA PR (about the only thing they do well anymore). NASA has always regarded the ISS as their exclusive territory. Remember how pissy [space.com] they got when the Russians wanted to bring up a tourist (just because they realized it would give the Russians another "first" in space)?

I'm sorry, but I'm a big fan of NASA and I find this whole effort to be ridiculous. The ISS was sold as a tool that would provide all of these critical capabilities and now, all of a sudden, they have to drum up business.

Sorry, but the ISS has officially become a Solution In Search Of A Problem.

Okay, so let's cut all government funding of NASA because you don't want to support "intellectual curiosity". While we're at it, let's cut all government grants to US higher education institutions. After all, that's intellectual curiosity, too!~
And let's stop giving out government-awarded scholarships to promising students. Why the hell should we all pay because they want to learn more, do some research and solve our problems?~
And none of this publicly-funded disease research shit. Let the big pharm

I am in complete agreement. I don't want to be forced to pay for those things. I can pay voluntarily, thus if those institutions want my money, then they shall have to take part in activities that benefit me.

'Moral good' is no justification for breaking the law, and all of such spending is in violation of the Constitution. States are free to spend as their constituents desire.

Nowhere after that statement is Congress granted the authority to do whatever it wishes. Congress is extremely limited in its powers. As James Madison said, "The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."

Nowhere after that statement is Congress granted the authority to do whatever it wishes.

Err, huh? Collecting income taxes is already legal under the 16th amendment. And the part you cite talks about *legislative powers*. Nothing in that text limits about how the federal government may spend that tax revenue once it's been collected.

I'll bet the use of your taxes to pay for public libraries really pisses you off too! You just sit there drinking your tang, typing on your computer and watching your satellite TV, bitching about all the money wasted on the space program...

It's not ad hominem, he pointed out that he's using the fruits of his tax dollars as we speak, so they weren't wasted. The proper counterargument is to argue that the space program didn't really provide these things, probably since they would have come about through private enterprise eventually. I don't actually believe that would have happened by now, but that's pretty much the only way to claim it was "waste" when you are using the fruits of that waste.

I am so fine with that. Can we stop paying for the poor too? I just want the Government to give me 3 things. A standing military, infrastructure (Power, Water, Sewage, Transportation and Data), and to protect my ability to Pursue happiness.

I do not need my government to give me stuff. By the pursuit of happiness, I mean of course things like keeping monopolies from abusing their positions and encouraging real competition in the market place. So I can get rich if I really work at it.

"Paying for the poor" helps to keep the place nicer all around, meaning you have more chance at all of "pursuing happiness". BTW, inancing first two things inevitably gives more opportunities for that pursuit to quite small group of people. And as to your ability to pursue happiness...people have shown time and time again that they generally have a hard time at moderation, a hard time not living on the credit of future generations (this graph [wikipedia.org] is especially "inconvenien

Police do not seem to do a very good job at protecting people. They are not too bad at catching the criminal that killed you. They are very good at catching a criminal that kills a cop. Protection though is not their strong point. For that what you need is a populace that may or may not at any time be carrying a concealed weapon. That will prevent alot of crime.

I just want the Government to give me 3 things. A standing military... and to protect my ability to Pursue happiness.

Good luck getting those two to coexist.

The purpose of a standing military is 1) to route your tax dollars to defense contractors, and 2) to stop you from doing anything the military-defense complex doesn't want you doing.

Oh, you thought all those high-tech weapons would only ever be used against brown people in foreign countries, who don't count? And that building a highly armed totalitarian order-giving hierarchy would increase democracy in your country? You didn't want Iraq war graduates using their newfo